WINDING DOWN
An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week's net and technology news
by Alan Lenton
Apple v Swiss (again), Google data centers, Westworld, vampires, correlation v cause, accidents, Cinderella, French Google tax, Kevlar socks, EA freebie blunder, Ada Lovelace Day, patents (again), Pandora, Google News and eBay. A few choice items for your reading pleasure this week.
Enjoy!
Shorts:
Following up from my previous piece about using the clock face owned by the Swiss Railways, I have another tale of Apple tangling with the Swiss. This time it’s Swiss fashion photographer Sabine Liewald, one of whose pictures was used in Apple’s Mac Book Pro without her permission, and, of course, without paying her. Now she’s suing them, not merely for her copyright fees, but also for a proportion of their profits! Very feisty, and I guess we will all be waiting to see if she succeeds. And it is a very classy picture...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/sabine-liewald-sues-apple-eye-photo-macbook_n_1967252.html?utm_hp_ref=technology
Ever wondered what it is like inside Google’s data centers? Well now you can find out, since they’ve arranged a virtual tour of one of their centers. It looks a bit like a child’s playground with lots of pipes painted in primary colors, but the most eerie part is the almost complete absence of people in the part of the center where the computers are. While data centers don’t have large staffs, that many computers in one place means that there’s always something needing to be replaced, so there are engineers working around it.
I did find a couple in the static pictures, but virtually nothing in the general tour. It reminded me quite a lot of the underground control room scenes in the film ‘Westworld’. I was left wondering how many cameramen the gunslinger got before they finished the film!
http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/
The secret of vampires may well have been discovered by medical researchers, using mice. It seems that old mice being given transfusions of blood from young mice have some of their tissues rejuvenated, and even start to regrow new brain connections which had started to disappear as part of the aging process. Obviously, there is still a lot of work to be done before this can be applies to humans as part of a therapy, and it does sound creepy.
In the mean time I’d justify my earlier statement by pointing out that in all the vampire movies I’ve ever seen the vampires (mostly male) spend their time biting the necks of scantily clad young ladies. Q.E.D.*
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9615779/Transfusion-of-young-blood-could-delay-onset-of-diseases-like-Alzheimers.html
Homework:
There’s an interesting piece of work by Chinese and US researchers on car accidents and mobile phone users. Normally this sort of research starts by looking at how many accidents are caused by drivers using mobile phones. Since there seems to be a higher level of accidents involving the mobile phones than would be expected, laws have been passed in many places to make it illegal to use mobile phones in cars. However, it was noticed that in China the ban hasn’t reduced accidents by anything like the amount expected, and the researchers were taxed with trying to find out why.
In this case the researchers started thinking out of the box, and rather than setting off down the well-worn track of looking at police enforcement of the law, they opted to have a look at what sort of people use mobile phones while driving. Well, surprise, surprise, it turns out that there is a close correlation between people who are already reckless drivers, and people who use phones while driving!
Although this isn’t yet a peer reviewed result, it highlights a mistake frequently made by politicians, and others, when using public statistics: mistaking correlation for cause and effect. There is definitely a correlation between accidents and mobile phone use while driving. So the conclusion was drawn that since it’s extremely unlikely that accidents cause mobile phone use, accidents must be caused by mobile phone use. Wrong, in fact what this research suggests is something entirely different - it suggests that mobile phone use is, in fact, one of the bad habits - signatures, if you like - of ongoing dangerous driving. It also shows the uselessness of trying to stop it by passing a special law. Bad driving is already illegal in most countries, so dangerous drivers are already breaking the law, why would they take any more notice of a law targeted at one specific aspect of their overall driving culture?
So, the moral of this little lesson is that when politicians and the like start to talk about cause and effect, stop for a minute and consider whether what they are talking about is truly cause and effect, or just a correlation.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/12/phone_bans/
In about ten weeks’ time it’ll be Xmas. And Xmas is, at least here in the UK, pantomime time. I remember as a child being take to see Cinderella. I thought it was great! I think I was about 9 or 10 at the time and afterwards I went down to the local library and got a book of panto tales out of the library. I think I must have been an incipient geek even then, because I can remember mentally questioning whether glass slippers would just break, fairy godmother notwithstanding.
Now, more years than I like to think of later, my question has been answered by mechanical engineer Antariksh Bothale. And the answer is yes, unless they were made of toughened thermal glass - ordinary glass would break when she tried to walk. Which just goes to show that Cinderella’s fairy godmother must have had a PhD in materials science!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/15/cinderella_glass_slipper/
I see the French government are surrendering again - this time to their own publishing houses. The French are planning to charge search engines for clicks through to French newspaper and journal sites. Google is the main target. Given that Google reckons that it alone directs four billion users to French media pages each month, and doesn’t charge the newspapers and journals, I think the press are getting quite a bargain. Google, in response is threatening to exclude French media sites from its search results. This just the preliminary round of sword rattling, but we can expect an escalation in the near future if the government continues to push its protectionist plans.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19996351
Geek Stuff:
Looking for an Xmas present for your dad? Here’s one that is useful, traditional, but preserves your reputation as a geek - Kevlar socks! They’ve even got a brilliant name - Socrates Socks! They are made from a Kevlar-carbon matrix material, and are designed never to get a hole, wear out or droop. However, I wouldn’t assume they are bullet proof...
http://www.gizmag.com/socrates-kevlar-socks/24572/
So hands up how many of you failed to read last week’s Winding Down because you were too busy downloading a bunch of EA games for free, using that US$20 code that they messed up? The code was supposed to be used only once, but someone mis-programmed the server validation check, and people were able to use it multiple times. The code was for $20 off a game, and since a number of EA games are only US$19.99, a downloading frenzy occurred. Eventually, a belated 18 hours after the code got out, EA closed the loophole. Sloppy, very sloppy.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/15/ea_free_games_after_discount_code_goes_viral/
Scanner: Other stories
Ada Lovelace Day: Women celebrate female scientists
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19899478
http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=298
The patent, used as a sword
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-among-tech-giants-can-stifle-competition.html?hp&_r=1&
Pandora boss urges 85% pay cut for musicians - While steadily cashing himself out of the company ...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/17/pandora_fairness/
Google News at 10: How the algorithm won over the news industry
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/google-news-at-10-how-the-algorithm-won-over-the-news-industry/262641/
eBay frets as right to resell comes under scrutiny
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/07/ebay_campaigns_over_first_sale_doctrine_copyright_case/
* Of course, it’s always possible that there is a correlation between the scantiness of their clothing and eternal life...
Acknowledgements
Thanks to readers Andrew, Astrid, Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material used in this issue.
Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Spamato spam filter...
Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
21 October 2012
Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.
Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.
